N. Journal
I put the score in front of me and then I don’t look at the whole thing anymore because if I look at the whole thing it starts behaving like it knows something. Seven boxes, seven little orders, trajectory, legend, everything sitting there very correctly. No. I take the scissors.
First the red horn. I cut around it badly because I like the white edge. If I cut too close it becomes an object again and I don’t want an object, I want the bit around it too. The horn and some sand and the place where the sand stops making sense. Schnippel. Put it here.
Mami Wata, you can have that one.
I don’t know why you need a red horn. Maybe you don’t. Maybe I do.
Then the man with the stick. I cut the yellow square first and his head comes off by accident, almost. I leave a little bridge of paper at his neck. He is still there. I tell him, sorry, you have to bend a little more now. He is already bending. He has been walking through this stupid soft landscape for ages. There are those white sticks around him and they look like somebody has tried to measure the sand.
I put him behind the horn.
No, that looks like an announcement.
I put him on the other side.
That’s better because now he isn’t listening to it. They just happen at the same time.
I say, Mami Wata, I don’t know if this is what you meant by home.
The scissors are sticky. There is glue on one blade from yesterday. I scrape it with my thumbnail and it comes off in one grey little roll. I put that on the table too. It looks like a tiny dead worm. Not everything has to go in the journal but now it is in the journal.
The two sleeping people are difficult. They already fit too much. Their bodies know where the other body is. I don’t like cutting around them because it makes them even more into one thing. So I cut a rectangle and keep the lines behind them, all those lines, because the lines don’t care who belongs to whom. The lines go through everything.
I turn them sideways.
That changes it.
Now they are not sleeping correctly. They are drifting down the page.
Good.
I say to them, you can sleep but you can’t explain anything.
I think that is fair.
Mami Wata, do you sleep?
No, wait, that is a stupid question. Of course the lake sleeps. Or it doesn’t. I don’t know. I only know when I sleep because I disappear and then there is morning. Sometimes I wake up and my arm is under me and I have to pull it out with the other hand because it feels like somebody else’s arm. That is probably enough about sleeping.
I cut the stones next. Little stones with lights. They are very small so I cut them in groups because otherwise they will vanish into the floor. One group of three, one of two, one alone. The one alone goes beside the yellow man.
He needs a night light.
I laugh because suddenly he is a child.
Sorry.
I move it away again.
Then I move it back.
No, you can have it.
I am talking to all of them now. This always happens. Once they are cut out they become impossible to keep quiet. Before, when they were still in the picture, they behaved. On the table they begin making demands.
The big red thing is worst.
I cut around the sleeping red mass first. It looks heavy but the paper weighs nothing. That bothers me. I hold it between two fingers and wave it. Look, you are nothing. Look how light you are. It doesn’t care.
Then the standing one.
I don’t cut the little men away. They stay because otherwise the red body becomes too heroic. It needs the tiny men standing there not knowing what to do with it. I understand them. Sometimes something is just much too big and you become very polite beside it.
I put the sleeping red one above the sleeping pair.
No.
Too much sleeping.
I put it below the stones.
Now it looks buried.
Generators in sleep.
I say it out loud because I like how wrong it sounds.
Generators in sleep.
Generators in sleep.
Maybe the body is a generator. Maybe a home is a generator. Maybe I shouldn’t say maybe every time I put two things next to each other. That is the problem with cutting things. You put them beside each other and immediately your brain puts on a little hat and starts working at the information desk.
No information desk.
I draw a line through it.
Red pencil.
Just one line, from the horn, past the bent man, underneath the sleeping bodies. It reaches the edge and I stop.
Where are you going?
I draw it back in.
That looks ridiculous.
Good.
Now the lake.
There isn’t really a lake to cut out, only the score’s last box, reeds and little lights and that crescent. I don’t want the whole box. Too complete. I cut the moon out. Then some reeds. Then one little yellow light. The lake itself can stay missing.
There. Much better.
Mami Wata, you have to bring your own water.
I put the moon under the red mass.
No.
I put it in the yellow square behind the man.
Now it looks like a button.
No.
I put it almost outside the page at the bottom so only half of it is there. That I like.
The water starts below the paper.
I tell her this and suddenly I am very serious.
The water starts below the paper.
I don’t know where that came from.
I don’t touch it for a bit.
My fingers have glue on them now, and a black pencil line across the side of my hand. There is a small piece of the red figure stuck to my sleeve. I keep pressing the sleeping people down but one corner keeps lifting. Fine. Lift. I’m not holding you there.
I look at the score again. Plains. Altars. Night lights. Stones. Generator. Threshold. Witness. Rest. Spirits. Crowd. Lake. Home. They all sound important when they are written underneath each other.
When I cut them, they become stupid again.
I prefer them stupid.
Stupid can move.
I draw three leaves in the empty place near the top. They look like fish. I add stems so they look less like fish and now they look like fish with sticks in them. Never mind.
Chasing leafs.
I write it exactly like that.
Not leaves. Leafs.
Because it is already the thing.
I draw an arrow after them but then I cross the arrow out because I don’t know where they are going.
Mami Wata says, you found a home.
I know she said it because it is there in the words and I can hear it, but I don’t want to draw a house. Absolutely no house. I try one anyway, very small, just a square and roof, and immediately hate it. Schnippel. Gone.
I cut the house out of the paper.
Now there is a hole.
Oh.
That’s better.
I hold the page up and look through the hole at the wall.
You found a home.
The wall is in it.
Then my hand.
Then the window if I move the page.
Then my own knee.
I laugh.
Okay, Mami Wata. Fine.
That’s unfair.
A home that changes depending on what I hold behind the hole.
I put the paper down.
I write beside it: not empty.
Then I cross that out because maybe it is.
I write: come along.
I don’t cross that one out.
The crowd is last. I draw them instead of cutting them because I don’t want a crowd made from somebody else’s people. Tiny black marks, twelve or thirteen, I stop counting. One is lying down because my pen slipped. One is enormous compared with the others. One has three legs. Nobody cares. I put myself somewhere in there but then I don’t know which one is me.
That feels correct.
Going slow in the crowd.
Not stopping. Slow.
There is a difference in my legs when I say it. I can feel the back of my calves. My shoulders have been up for a while. I let them down. The paper doesn’t change.
The red horn is still stupidly loud. The sleepers are still falling sideways. The bent man is still walking without getting anywhere. The stone light is beside him. The giant red body is being watched. The lake is not on the page. The moon is half gone. The home is a hole.
I think this is enough.
No, one more thing.
I take a blue pencil and make one small line at the bottom edge, underneath the hole. Not water exactly. Just blue.
Mami Wata, I say, I don’t know where you are.
Then I say, you said you’ll be there.
Those are not the same sentence.
I leave both.
I put the scissors on top of the page so the curled corner stays down while the glue dries.
That is the drawing tonight.
The scissors holding it.
Me still talking.
The water somewhere under the paper.